And then the difficult Monroe was replaced by Sheree North in How to be Very, Very Popular. The producer Sam Spiegel avowed (in Picturegoer, 7 August 1954) that “Sheree is the next top star, believe me. She will definitely play Donald O’Connor’s girl friend in There’s No Business Like Show Business.” But she didn’t, because she was replaced by Marilyn Monroe There was another similarity with Monroe, however. As a pre-fame nude calendar of Marilyn’s surfaced, so too had some privately produced 16mm studies of Sheree North, which the US Post Office famously refused to handle by mail order, and which were termed “obscene” by the couriers. In two episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1974, 1975), she acted Charlene Maguire, a cocktail-lounge singer who falls for the recently divorced television news producer Lou Grant (played by Edward Asner). More recently, North was seen in Seinfeld (1995, 1998) as Babs Kramer, who reveals the first name of her son – Seinfeld’s next-door neighbour, played by Michael Richards – to be Cosmo. Anthony Hayward Sheree North was the last in a line of 20th Century-Fox blondes to be subjected to a casting manoeuvre instigated by the studio head Darryl F.
Ditched by Hollywood, she set about reviving her career on stage, which included playing Martha Mills in the Broadway musical comedy I Can Get It for You Wholesale (Shubert Theatre, 1962), and becoming a strong character actress on television. She had already appeared as herself in the first episode of The Bing Crosby Show (1954) But two of her most memorable appearances came in sitcoms. Her Hollywood heyday was brief, but the sudden fame meant that in 1955 she married her second husband, the music pubisher John “Bud” Freeman, in a secret Arizona ceremony at which she wore a red wig and horn-rimmed glasses as a disguise, although the couple were divorced two years later. After she starred as Curly Flagg in How to be Very, Very Popular, 20th Century-Fox cast North in The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956), The Best Things in Life are Free (1956), The Way to the Gold (1957), No Down Payment (1957), In Love and War (1958) and Mardi Gras (1958). It was adapted into another film, Living It Up (1954), starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, in which North reprised her show-stopping dance – although production was held up for two months when she broke her right foot during rehearsals. By now using the professional name Sheree North, she worked with Alton again and won a Theatre World Award for her role as the jitterbug dancer Whitey in the Broadway stage musical Hazel Flagg (Mark Hellinger Theatre, 1953), which was based on the 1937 film comedy Nothing Sacred and proved to be her big break. Six years later, she appeared, uncredited, in the slapstick musical Excuse My Dust (1951).
When the choreographer Robert Alton spotted North performing at the Macayo Club, Santa Monica, he signed her up as a dancer in the chorus of the film musical Here Come the Girls (1953), starring Bob Hope. She had already made her film d?t, aged 12, as Roxie, one of the children trying to put on a Broadway show, in An Angel Comes to Brooklyn (1945). Although married at 15 and a mother at 16, she continued to dance in Los Angeles clubs, as Shirley Mae Bessire (taking her first husband’s surname). North, playing a small-town single mother struggling to raise her daughter but with dreams of making the big time, is memorable for preceding a drunken tap-dance routine with the words: “Actually, I was always more of a dancer than a singer.” Born Dawn Shirley Bethel in Los Angeles in 1933, she was dancing for the troops in USO wartime shows by the age of 10 and, three years later, was a regular in the chorus line at the city’s Greek Theatre. Wisely, she carved out a career for herself on stage and as a character actress on television. One notable return to feature films saw North going back to her dancing roots in The Trouble with Girls (1969), one of Elvis Presley’s better pictures, featuring the King as the manager of a 1920s travelling show. Following North’s winning performance in How to be Very, Very Popular, she was cast in other films and groomed as a new Monroe – to whom her 5ft 5½ in, 35½-23½-35½ figure was similar – but 20th Century-Fox then promoted Jayne Mansfield as its new blonde bombshell and she was left out in the cold.
The film was never made, but North also tried out, unsuccessfully, for the Irving Berlin tribute There’s No Business Like Show Business, in which Monroe did finally agree to appear, seeing the song-and-dance routines as a challenge. North auditioned for Pink Tights (sometimes referred to as The Girl in Pink Tights) when Monroe was suspended by studio bosses after failing to arrive on set, deciding that the role – alongside Frank Sinatra – was not good enough for her. She joined Betty Grable, the Forces sweetheart who was making her last film appearance, and stole the show with her sexy dancing in the story of two San Francisco exotic dancers who witness a murder and hide out in a boys’ college.
Of particular note was North’s energetic performance to “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, publicised at the time as “the screen’s first rock’n'roll dance scene”, and the shapely actress was featured on the front of Life magazine in March 1955 alongside the simple coverline: ” Sheree North Takes Over From Marilyn Monroe”. Hollywood’s peroxide-blonde bombshell in reserve was signed by 20th Century-Fox the previous year, when the studio was finding Monroe unreliable during her short marriage to Joe DiMaggio. When Marilyn Monroe turned down the role of a stripper in How to be Very, Very Popular, 20th Century-Fox drafted in Sheree North to star in the 1955 musical comedy.
to sustain public confidence in our national qualifications,” she adds.The report has prompted the QCA to set up a task force to strengthen authentication of coursework before next summer’s exams. It is to be led by Sue Kirkham, the president of the Secondary Heads Association.. Dawn Shirley Bethel (Sheree North), actress: born Los Angeles 17 January 1933; married first 1948 Fred Bessire (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1952), second 1955 John Freeman (marriage dissolved 1957), third 1958 Gerhardt Sommer (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1963), fourth Phillip Norman; died Los Angeles 4 November 2005. She calls for “robust” checking to detect whether pupils are cheating “It is fundamental … It reveals there were 3,500 cases of malpractice by students in exams last year, although it says that cases of collusion between students out of school still outnumber internet plagiarism by three to one.Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Education, in a letter to Dr Ken Boston, the chief executive of the QCA, says coursework should only be used when it is “the most valid way of assessing subject specific skills”. One in 20 actually drafted their children’s GCSE essays.Teachers also sometimes give their classes too much help, resulting in “coursework cloning”, the report adds. In addition, the report says, many parents are unaware of the limits to the amount of help they can give their children with coursework, and in some cases are supplying the answers to questions.